The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has announced the disbursement of upkeep allowances to 11,685 students who were unpaid for the 2024/2025 academic session. 
   
The Fund explained that the unpaid allowances, amounting to N927million, were uncovered during a routine reconciliation exercise conducted by its team on student upkeep payments.
 
It’s Managing Director, Akintunde Sawyerr, stated this at a press conference in Abuja, yesterday. Sawyerr explained that the challenges were caused by a range of technical and operational issues encountered during processing, including temporary network downtime, unsuccessful transactions, and situations in which bank account details could not be properly validated at the time of payment. 
 
He said: “In line with the President’s directive on accountability and efficiency in public service, management has approved a one-time, focused reconciliation process to resolve all outstanding cases.
   
“This includes direct engagement with affected students, a defined grace period for updating or providing alternative bank account details; multi-layer validation involving IT, client support, audit, and finance teams, and prompt payment once validation is completed.
 
“Our objective is straightforward: every eligible student must receive what is due to them, accurately, transparently, and without delay.”

On his part, the Executive Director Operations, NELFUND, Mustapha Iyal, disclosed that 325 tertiary institutions have so far been onboarded for the 2025/2026 academic session, with 3.7 million eligible students.  He also stated that while 283,275 applications for the current session have been verified, 13,026 others were rejected.